Rising from the Ashes of the Burning Bush

I was nine years old when George W. Bush was elected president of the United States in 2000. I now realize that half of my life has been spent under the rule of King George II. I decided that the best way to commemorate his presidency was to look back on the ups and downs of a tumultuous eight years that changed American culture and society forever.

In September 2001 George W. Bush had been president for only eight months. He became president after one of the most controversial elections in American history. He lost the popular vote to Al Gore, but still found himself sitting at the desk in the oval office at the White House thanks to the Electoral College.

That September America was attacked on the eleventh day of that month. The President was visiting the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. One of his aides whispered in his ear that America had been attacked. What followed was one of Bush’s most critiqued presidential moments. He didn’t freak out, jump up, and run out of the building. Instead he sat and thought. Should the President have gotten up, acted more swiftly and confidently? Should he have sat there like he did as to not panic the children in the room? He did the latter, and days later, on September 14th, in New York City at ground zero he showed a confidence in his ability to track down the people who had crashed a plane into the ground in Pennsylvania, attacked the Pentagon, and demolished the Twin Towers. “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon,” he said.

A year and half later, on March 13, 2003, Bush felt it was time to get back at those who attacked us, but we suddenly found ourselves in Iraq. We had been in Afghanistan since October 7, 2001, the location commonly believed to be near where Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind 9/11 lives. But instead, we chose to focus our resources elsewhere, and we invaded Iraq under pretenses that Iraq had developed weapons of mass destruction.

“Mission Accomplished,” read on a banner a little over a month later on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. Bush said that we had been victorious with our major combat operations. “In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed,” Bush declared. But, we would find ourselves in Iraq to this very day, and the terrorist who had planned 9/11, Bin Laden, still not yet captured.

The President’s re-election bid in 2004 blindsided many Americans who felt he was sure to lose that one at least. He didn’t, and America had just signed up for four more years of “Dubya.”

At the end of August, 2005 brought us the year of Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters in American history. President Bush was criticized for his slow reaction to rescuing and providing aid to the victims of the hurricane. He had appointed one of his friends to be the head of the Federal Emergency Management Association, Michael Brown. Brown resigned shortly after President Bush told him, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” It was also reported that Bush had been vacationing in Arizona at the time of the disaster, and when it came time to visit New Orleans for his first time since the disaster, he flew over in an airplane instead of walking among the people.

The war in Iraq had reached its most difficult year in 2006. Americans wanted out, but Bush stuck to his guns and stayed. Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, also resigned that year after revelations of mismanagement in war strategy and that nine billion dollars had gone missing. Photos of tortured prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq also fueled the fire of American unrest. In January 2007, Bush even committed to sending more troops to Iraq as part of his “surge” plan.

This year, in 2008, we witnessed the devastating fall of the American economy. Private banks were bought by the government to save them from going under. American automakers find themselves on their own brink of collapse. And, now we can officially say that we are in a recession.

As George W. Bush enters his final days in office we can look back and say that he has at least done one thing right. That is his graciousness at a time of the transition of power in America. Barack Obama won the presidency this year, and I’m sure when Obama spoke to Bush over the telephone on election night that he thanked him for doing all that he did over the last eight years, right and wrong (mostly wrong) to help him get elected.

Is Bush to Blame for the Georgian War?

For the past several days there’s been heavy fighting in Georgia, particularly in the break away region of South Ossietia. But could Bush administration policies be to blame for the quick escalation in tensions that lead to all out war?

In 2002 special forces trained Georgian troops to fight in the Chechnya region, as part of his war on terror. Georgian forces received further training prior to the 2003 US violation of the “territorial integrity” of Iraq. The government has also received over $150 million in US aid for security purposes, and that’s on top of nearly $300 million for “effective governance.”

But why would Bush care so much about this tiny eastern European country? For one a major oil pipeline that skips both Russia and Iran runs through this country, supplying oil from the black sea to western countries. Secondly this conflict stems from the cold war, and feelings over the sphere of influence.

McCain meanwhile used the same strong arm tactics that sparked the conflict in the first place. He called for Russia to be removed from the G8, and said that Russia should immediately halt it’s military operations, while mentioning nothing of Georgia halting it’s action. While Russia should defiantly be condemned for jumping into another nations internal conflicts, it should be noted that the Georgian president activated his shiny new American trained army to begin fighting rebels in the province of South Ossetia.

Barack Obama meanwhile called on restraint from both sides, while also siding with an American ally. He made this statement, “I reiterate my call for Russia to stop its bombing campaign, to stop flights of Russian aircraft in Georgian airspace, and to withdraw its ground forces from Georgia.”

Hersh: Congress Agreed to Bush Request to Fund Major Escalation in Secret Operations Against Iran

Veteran Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh has published an article in the New Yorker Magazine that asserts that congressional leaders agreed to a request from President Bush last year to greatly increase funding, to 400 million dollars, for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran. This escalation of these covert and secret activities is meant to destabilize the religious leadership of Iran. Hersh wrote his article based upon information from “current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources.” The article notes that covert activities by the United States are not new in Iran–we have been conducting cross-border operations from Southern Iraq since last year.

The request for the $400 million was described in something called a “Presidential Finding”, signed by President Bush, and, under Federal Law, these Presidential Findings “must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees”. The article by Hersh noted later that, “In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.” This is a glaring contradiction and hypocrisy that is certainly not unfamiliar to the politics of the United States.

I hope that we all can now clearly see that the Republican Party is a war-like party of imperialists and interventionists. And I hope that we can now also clearly see that the Democratic Party is a war-like party of imperialists and interventionists, through their aiding and abetting of policies that are as such. I hope that we can now clearly see that both political parties are about policing the world, and spending huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to do so. We are spending 400 million dollars alone on trying to destabilize one single country. That money could have gone to education. That money could have gone to healthcare. That money could have gone to infrastructure. But, out of all of the needy areas of our country, our political leaders, of both parties, decided to direct the money instead towards destabilizing another country. 400 million dollars! That could not be described as “spare change”. Obviously, though, there is no “change” that our leaders can spare. And the small, superficial change that they do provide is worthless.

But Iran is not the only country targeted by the United States. According to Dennis Kucinich’s 35 Articles of Impeachment against President Bush, “On September 30, 2001, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of overturning the regime in Iran, as well as those in Iraq, Syria, and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted in then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith’s book, ‘War and Decision’.” The four other countries in the Middle East were, according to Wesley Clark, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Lebanon.

It is my opinion that the United States has been the interventionist policeman of the world for too long. And especially covert interventions, because that promotes “blowback”, defined as a term used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. Hatred in the Middle East towards the United States as a result of our covert operations targeting Middle-Easterners, and then Middle-Easterners demonstrating their hatred in a terrorist attack, is an example of blowback.

Is it honestly in our best interest to undertake operations such as this, especially when domestic issues are in such dire need of attention? And, ask yourself, do we even have the right to interfere in and destabilize another country, someone else’s country, as such? My personal opinion is that we have neither the right nor the obligation to try to destablize the governments of other countries and throw them into political chaos. Aside from the concerns of blowback and the misplacement of tax money, it is very important to do unto others as you would want done unto yourself.

Kucinich reads Bush Articles of Impeachment on the House floor

I flipped on my television at approximately ten-thirty Eastern time on Monday night, and I was pleasantly surprised to find Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) speaking on C-Span. Kucinich was talking about President Bush and his various crimes against the United States, and I soon became aware that the Representative was introducing Articles of Impeachment against President Bush (also known as House Resolution 1258).

Dennis Kucinich had begun his long trudge through the Articles two hours earlier, and he would continue his reading, to an almost empty House chamber, for nearly another three hours. There were 35 Articles in total, each one detailing a crime that Bush had committed that warranted impeachment. I congratulate Kucinich for having the courage and conviction to undertake this task.

A summary of each offense for each Article, as provided by the index of the Articles of Impeachment, reads as follows: Read more

In favor of exercising caution with Sanctions

Did you know that, during the 1990’s, the foreign policies of the United States killed hundreds of thousands of innocents just in the country of Iraq alone? You might be wondering what kind of terrible policy could have caused that measure of destruction. Well, the policy is the use of sanctions, and it can be just as harmful to other countries as all-out war would be.

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George Bush: Music Pirate?

Well, we all know that President Bush is a lair and a cheat, but did you know that he also breaks copyright laws?

Mark Lancaster at Fro.gg caught it first, but that Fox News video of President Bush playing with his iPod is turning out to be more than just fun and games. As it turns out, the president himself may have put songs on his iPod illegally. In short, he has The Beatles on his iPod, which are not available for download anywhere online, and the RIAA has recently been arguing that just uploading cds to your own computer is not “fair use.”

Normally I wouldn’t hold up the president as a model citizen, but when even the leader of the free world is breaking the law to listen to music, it is clear that the copyright system is in need of serious changes.

2005 Bush Inauguration Violated Protesters Rights

A judge ruled that the Bush administration violated protesters rights of assembly and speech by keeping the protesters far at bay reports the Washington Post:

U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman found that the National Park Service violated its own regulations by giving the inauguration’s private organizers preferential treatment and extraordinary control over access to Pennsylvania Avenue. The Presidential Inaugural Committee roped off most of the parade route and allowed only those with tickets inside.

Protesters were limited to small, specific areas, leading to a lawsuit by antiwar activists.

“The inauguration is not a private event,” Friedman said in his ruling. “The National Park Service, on behalf of the PIC, cannot reserve all of Pennsylvania Avenue for itself, leaving only the Ellipse and the northern part of John Marshall Park to protesters.”

This ruling could be overturned if it’s appealed. If it’s not protesters will have greater access to the presidents inauguration.

If you can remember Bush’s 2005 inauguration was more like the induction of communist hardliner. Fences kept everyone except for Bush donors and supporters from being near the event. Meanwhile snipers “guarded” the protesters, and tall metal fences blocked access to many parts of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Inside the event Bush spent tens of thousands on a bomb proof cage thrown. At least we have only 9 more months of Bush’s invasion of American freedoms and his wasteful spending.

President Bush Calls War “Romantic”

President Bush seems to have changed a bit since his days essentially dodging the draft for Vietnam. The Huffington Post reports that he recently said that fighting in Afganistan is “in some ways romantic.”

“I must say, I’m a little envious,” Bush said. “If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.”

“It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks,” Bush said.

There isn’t too much to say to that. Bush seems to fancy himself a general for toy soldiers. In reality, he has somehow become the commander-in-chief of a real army made of real men. In response, I would like to remind people of Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est.” Here is the end of the poem.

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Bush has not been to war. When he knew that his name would soon be called and it would soon be his time to serve, he ran. Now, he says that he sees a good fight that he would be glad to take part in.

No. He doesn’t. He sees a game that he would like to play, and he wants more toy soldiers so that he can keep playing. War is not romantic, and it seems an insult to the brave men and women of the armed services to suggest that it is anything but hard gruesome work which should be avoided.

A Surge of Failure

Contrary to what the President has told us in recent months, the surge in Iraq is not working. It’s true that fewer people are dying compared to the mass casualties of previous years, and that Al Qaeda in Iraq is “on the run.” But the simple fact is that people are still dying, American soldiers are still dying, and that political stability for the country (the entire justification for the surge) has not even been accomplished.
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Obama Is The Detox The Government Needs

In the past, I’ve called Obama a steaming pile of charisma, but now I’m convinced that he is MY steaming pile of charisma. First, the man’s wife can admit that sometimes there are reasons not to be proud of America. Then I read about that he is a civil libertarian. Now he has officially stated that he will review all of President Bush’s executive orders and throw out any that are unconstitutional. The clinches it. Obama is the candidate who will best serve America, and he will do it by reversing at least some of the damage done by Bush.

I was afraid that Obama would become president and just sit there for 4-8 years, but clearly he is would actually do some good as president.

The most important topics for the next president have to be Iraq, the national debt, and reversing the damage that Bush has done. Oh wait, both those first two things are very related to what Bush has done as president. With that in mind, it is even more important that the next president pledge to turn the country around and go in the opposite direction of President Bush.

Obama’s pledge to review and discard illegal and unconstitutional executive orders is the first step towards completely removing any remnants of Bush administration policy from America. He has even gone so far is to say that warrantless wiretaps are not just outrageous and undemocratic, they are also unrepublican. An overhaul of the federal government will have to be done once President Bush leaves office, and Obama has the backbone to do it.

Executive Efficacy Expanded

Many, many people in these united states long for the day upon which George W. Bush will vacate the Presidency. During Bush’s terms in office, he has gotten us into a Quagmire in Iraq (and has engaged in a generally arrogant and foolish foreign policy), deftly removed many of our civil liberties from us, racked up record deficits, exploited the people’s fear of terrorism (which helped him to win elections, achieve his agenda, and rob us of our apparently undeserved liberties), and, most importantly, greatly increased the power and influence of the Executive Branch. The People long for Bush’s exit because they are tired of these repeated abuses and usurpations, and with the hope that, once Dubya leaves, we’ll be able to get a Democrat or at least a moderate in office and get America back onto the right track. This perspective is not in agreement with my own; in point of fact, I disagree with it very strongly. It seems to me that this belief is the product of the very ignorance which allowed Bush to expand his office and worsen the state of the country in the first place. Let me take just a few moments in order to explain my thoughts more clearly on this matter. Read more

Bush Personally Authorized Waterboarding

George Bush personally authorized waterboarding for at least three prisoners. That is now a fact. CIA Director Michael Hayden said this week at a senate hearing that the CIA waterboarded 3 detainees. This is bad enough by itself, but then on February 6th, Deputy White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto explained that the process of waterboarding detainees would require the President to approve of the use of the technique on a case by case basis. Fratto and Hayden both also said that the CIA might reconsider its current ban on waterboarding if a future situation warranted the technique.

Fratto said:

Again, I think I’d refer you to the testimony yesterday where the intelligence chiefs didn’t rule anything out.
What I did talk about was the process whereby the administration would consider any enhanced interrogation techniques.
And that process includes the director of the Central Intelligence Agency bringing the proposal to the attorney general, where a review would be conducted to determine if the plan would be legal and effective. At that point, the proposal would go to the president. The president would listen to the determinations of his advisers and make a decision.
If he made a decision to authorize a specific interrogation technique, part of that process also involves going to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and the chairmen and ranking members of the Judiciary Committees and to inform them that a change in the program has taken place.

The White House is openly admitting that President Bush authorized the use of waterboarding. In addition, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and Judiciary Committees are fully aware of his actions. Before this week, I hadn’t doubted that Bush had committed war crimes, but I did doubt that he would admit it to the press. This administration is flaunting their actions as though they are above the law. Torturing people is not something that decent human being are supposed to do, much less brag about and attempt to justify by waving an American flag.

I hate to have to have to say it again, but if there was ever a grounds for impeachment of President Bush or any president, this is it. Remember, impeachment is just an investigation. It is not an accusation of guilt. Certainly, when the president’s own deputy press secretary and a CIA director appointed by the president openly state that the president has authorized waterboarding and that the CIA has carried it out, it is time to investigate. If there is no investigation, this sets a precedent that presidents are allowed to break any laws that they please, tell the world about their crimes, and continue to rule without regard for the law or even basic human rights.

If, as usual, Congress doesn’t do anything, then screw what I said in my last post. I’m going straight back to having next to no faith in any branch of our government.

So far, Congress had stayed silent. This is not kindergarden. Silence is not golden. Silence is complicit.

The only thing we have to fear is…

Franklin Roosevelt said in his First Inaugural Address, during the thick of the Great Depression, to a frightened, uncertain, and despairing population: “Firstly, I would like to assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is… fear itself.” Roosevelt, arguably one of the greatest Presidents of these united states, gave new hope and comfort to the down-trodden population with his first address to the American people. And, ultimately, he would assuage the people’s fears altogether by lifting them out of the terrible Depression. 

In 1933 and the years following Roosevelt’s Inauguration, the leaders of yesteryear triumphed over the problems facing them. We must face many new challenges in this new millennium, and it seems to me that we have something new that should be feared above all. Read more

Why Joe Biden should be the next President

Among those in the current field of Democrats vying to become the next President of the United States are:

1. Barack Obama, a rising star in the party renowned for his inspiring rags-to-riches story and ability to electrify audiences all over the country with his charisma and oratorical prowess.
2. Hillary Clinton, a tough-talking former first lady who happens to be a capable politician in her own right.
3. John Edwards, a popular former senator who has done a good job labeling himself the populist candidate in the race whilst fiercely going after his two fellow poll leaders. His pro-labor, pro-universal health care views make him appealing to a large number of Democrats.

These 3 candidates alone provide most Democrats the opportunity to vote for someone whose views are very similar, if not in direct lockstep with their own. While it’s great that we have a diverse field, a huge drawback is that we as voters sometimes forget or ignore, with help from our media, that we have 4 more choices who are possibly every bit as, if not more, qualified and able to be President. These choices are Bill Richardson, Joseph Biden, Christopher Dodd, and Dennis Kucinich. Read more

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